It's time for the Ferrari F430
My owner's experience with the 2005 Ferrari F1 F430. After I purchased the Ferrari 575 Maranello in late June of last year, 2005, I immediately fell in love with Ferrari. I originally wanted a F430 but when I asked the salesman (Mike Finneran of MAG - Midwestern Auto Group in Columbus, Ohio) if I could get one of them, he chuckled politely and said there was at least a 2-3 year waiting list. But then he mentioned that they had a brand new 2004 Ferrari Maranello demo with only 110 miles on it. I asked why such low mileage and he said the owner was driving it as his demo and since they had 15 other brands of cars, he changed demos brands frequently, thus the low mileage. So we struck up a deal and I had my first Ferrari. Whoa Daddy!! It was all downhill from there! I was instantly a Ferrari addict! That's when I knew I had to have the F430! So my search began.
Since I didn't know where to look first, I thought, how about eBay? Well..... isn't that where you find everything you always wanted? After a couple weeks of searching, I found one at Scottsdale Ferrari in Arizona. She only had 117 miles on her but it was listed as used.... not a demo. This is where I begin to have trouble with Ferrari (dealers). Ferraris are SO much in demand that there's this outrageous game the dealers play. The following statement is MY belief and NOT a substantiated fact! They get someone to buy the car new and put say 200-400 miles on it. Then this person brings it back to the dealer who in turn buys it back (I'm guessing they give the first owner the FULL purchase price AND a couple extra thousand dollars for his trouble). Don't you feel sorry for this poor guy? The dealership then sets the price to whatever the market will command (usually something insane) because it is now a used car!
I've been told that the Ferrari Company does not allow its dealers to sell their cars above the Factory sticker. Just look on eBay and you'll see coupes selling above $230-240K and Spyders selling for $300K plus! Thus the GAME! The sticker on my car read $187K but I had to pay $260K (well, they really weren't exactly holding a gun to my head!) or else my only other choice was to buy a Mattel Hot Wheels F430 model off of eBay. You just can't get a new Ferrari for sticker unless you're on the so called 'list'! As the great comedian W.C. Fields once said: "Sometimes a man has got to grab the bull by the tail and face the situation!"
I picked this particular F430 because of its very low mileage (all the others on eBay had at least 300-400 miles or more). It also had the F-1 Transmission, Ferrari Red brake calipers, the Scuderia Shields, Carbon Fiber interior trim panels, rear Leather Shelf, the Leather Headliner, CD changer and the leather seats also had Red stitching AND Red piping to match. I actually didn't buy it off the eBay auction but I called the dealer and worked out a deal (yeah...RIGHT). After finalizing the purchase, they arranged the shipping and I waited and waited and waited. I kept calling the dealer and asked where the car was. Then I was told all of a sudden, that the shipping price was going to be a little more. All in all, it took close to a month or more to get my F430.
I asked the trucker to bring it to a small plaza in Poland because there was plenty of room for him to unload the car. BUT... the unloading room wasn't the big problem.... the car's dead battery was! We couldn't even start the car to back it off the truck since it had a dead battery. Wonderful! The dealer had not turned off the battery kill switch that would have saved the battery during the 2 week transportation.
After much brainstorming and lots of swear words, we decided to manually push it back a few feet so he could open the side door of the car hauler and I was able to open the passenger door of the F430 and crawl into the car. I had to take the passenger firewall kick plate off so we could get to the secretly hidden dead battery. Good thing he had one of those portable self contained battery chargers or we would have been SOL! I get the kick plate off, touch the cables to the battery posts and BAM... a few sparks flew. Scared the hell out of me! Sure hope I didn't destroy the electrical system!
Well, we finally get her started and backed out off the truck to the view of a dozen anxious spectators waiting in the parking lot to see what's coming off this car hauler. Once off the truck, they all proceeded to surround the car like Indians around a wagon train. I'm being asked all kinds of questions and I haven't even sat in the driver's seat yet to know how to do anything on the car! The truck driver gets out of the car and says, "I think you should see this." Now what? Then a small surprise arose..... the speedo was screwed up! It read 55,555 miles or something crazy like that. I was afraid that I had just zapped the electrical system! Great, just great!
I decide to tip the driver and his wife $100 cause he was a really great guy and called me several times while on the road with updates on where he was and when he thought he might be delivering the F430. I then ask my girlfriend to follow me in her Range Rover in case anything goes wrong. I get her home that night with no problems what so ever. I put a Battery Tender on her and two days later the battery comes back to full snuff. After the battery is fully charged, I read the owners manual that day and decide to try and reset the car's security system code to see if that fixes anything. Bingo, the speedo jumps back to normal! Phew!
It took lots and lots of phone calls to get the title because of internal accounting problems within the dealership. I was also promised the original window sticker which took over a month or more to get because the first buyer was out of town. No kidding.... he was spending his 117 mile 'ride around' profit of $5-10K or more! I have forgotten to mention that I traded a 2004 BMW 645 convertible with only 2200 miles on the F430. I had bought it for my girlfriend and she hardly drove it at all. She had all kinds of excuses why so wouldn't drive it and to have it just sitting around collecting dust seemed stupid.
The F430 is absolutely the easiest of all my cars to drive. It's almost idiot proof which makes it perfect for me! You turn the key, put your foot on the brake, push the red start button, push the reverse R button on the console, back her out of the garage, touch the right upshift paddle for first gear and you're off and running! I like to keep her in the Automatic Mode all the time. If it's good enough for Michael Schumaker, it's good enough for me! The car is really comfortable and there's plenty of interior shoulder and leg room and rear visibility is near excellent (probably the best of all the cars I have). The F1 shifts pretty smooth but sometimes in the AUTO mode, it tends to hang on to the revs a little too long. Kinda scares the heck out of you but then she finally upshifts
The interior leather quality makes you feel like you're sitting on a King's throne! Absolutely stunning workmanship! The seats have beautiful red stitching and red piping over all the edges. The dash is also laid out beautifully with red stitching everywhere and very easy to read gauges and a huge Yellow (in my car) RPM gauge. I also have the leather rear shelf and headliner plus the carbon fiber dash panels which really help to dress up the interior even more. The radio is fairly easy to operate but the station digits, setting buttons and mode buttons are a little too small to see if you need reading glasses (like ME). You better have them with you or else you'll have no idea what you're doing. Plus, I think the European car manufacturers love to torture us with their little symbols on the buttons for everything. I've gotta go back to College to learn sign language or hieroglyphics and then maybe I'll understand them!
Then there's that that ENGINE..... oh my God!! Just starting her up puts goose bumps all over your body! Driving down the road at moderate speeds, she screams like a dozen hornets nests that were just broke open and they're all right behind your head chasing you ass wherever you go! Even if you get on it just a little, she whines and screams with an intensity that's hard to imagine. You absolutely have to hear it to believe it! There have been several posts elsewhere on the web that have said "forget the Tubi and other aftermarket exhaust systems, the F430 stock factory exhaust is absolutely perfect." Boy are they right and not kiddin a bit!
Not only does she sound great, she flies with the 'greatest of ease'. The F430 just wants to try and chew up anything in its way. Touch the throttle and she jumps like a beautiful woman that's just been goosed! I'm telling you, this car is a rocket ship in the true sense of the word! She rides real smooth and you hardly feel any irregularities on the road unless you hit a large bump. The steering is precise without being edgy and the brakes are very good. This F430 is an absolute pleasure to drive.
I've read various road tests all over about how fast the Murcielago , the Carrera GT and the Ford GT are and you and I both know they're true. BUT, I think the F430 may be able to tickle their asses a little and give them a slight surprise. One thing you must remember.... I personally haven't thrashed any of my cars yet because of their needed break-in mileage. Although in honesty, I usually don't try to set any Land Speed records anyway. In my opinion, the F430 is an absolutely fantastic car that any owner would be proud of and never regret purchasing. Plus, I'm pretty sure knowing its resale value will probably retain the highest percentage of the original purchase price of all the supercars I own, is worthy of a very large smile anyway.
There may be SLIGHTLY faster supercars cars (acceleration and top speed) around, but none that I feel are so easy to drive and enjoy every day of the week. The F430 is the true meaning of the phrase 'Let's Rock and Roll!'
p.s. The license plate X HIPPIE is a little take on part of my life in the late 60s and early 70s. I was a hippie wanna be. I wore some of the popular clothes then and had fairly long hair but just didn't go all out. If you look at the rear shot of the car showing the license plate, the car was running and some of the exhaust smoke was drifting over the plate. Kinda 'psychedelic' huh? Just like the F430! Right on man! :banana
